Covid: Vitamin D

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Murray, for the second time today. Aren’t you lucky to hear from me twice! I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate, and on the characteristically thoughtful argument that he set out. As he said, he and I do a lot of debates together, and as so often, I found myself agreeing with lots of what he said. However, the congratulations were not universal in my household as it is my wedding anniversary, and Emma was hoping I would be home sooner. So I congratulate him, but she reserves her congratulations, I am afraid.

I also want to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his chairship of the all-party group for respiratory health. It is a really important issue, certainly for communities like mine, and for communities up and down the country it is right that we champion that in Parliament as best we can. He raised two points that stuck with me. The first was on pandemic preparation. As he said, we cannot predict the future—we wish that we could; it would be a lot easier—but the one thing we do know is that the best preparation for anything, certainly when it comes to significant global events that affect us so enormously, is good health, and vitamin D is an important part of that. Secondly, he spoke about therapeutics—when people end up in hospital, how can we best improve their outcomes? I will explore some of those points briefly myself.

It is a crucial task to evaluate all aspects of this awful pandemic to see what we can do best to tackle it. Some 128,000 of our countrymen and women have lost their lives, resulting in an awful lot of broken hearts, and we would do anything to stop there being any more. That is why debates such as this are so important. We should be cheered that the vaccination roll-out continues to be successful—80% of adults have had their first dose—but no vaccine ever provides 100% protection, so any other possible methods to protect or treat covid-19 should be considered.

It is striking that yesterday, exactly a year since low-dose steroid treatment was found to successfully combat the virus in some cases, another life-saving treatment was discovered, in the form of artificial antibodies—a treatment expected to save six lives for every 100 patients treated. The prospect of vitamin D as a preventive measure and a treatment should be duly considered, particularly as it is cheap and widely available.

The hon. Member for Strangford touched on the evidence base in his contribution. Last December, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issued guidelines that said

“there was little evidence for using vitamin D supplements to prevent or treat COVID-19.”

In terms of prevention, NICE found that

“low vitamin D status was associated with more severe outcomes from COVID-19.”

For instance, in an audit of covid-19 patients in hospital in Newcastle, only one in five intensive care unit patients had vitamin D levels that would be considered adequate for overall health, contrasted with two in five non-ITU patients.

However, there is much still to understand about whether that is a genuinely causal relationship or a correlating one. In its assessment, the British Medical Journal said it may at least be partially due to correlations between vitamin D levels and other risk factors, such as age, genetics and obesity. Clearly, the evidence base is still developing. I would be interested to hear from the Minister about the latest information that she knows and how we might develop that evidence base going forward. For example, the Barcelona study that was mentioned was new to me, so I will certainly look that up.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made strong points about the fact that, outside covid-19, vitamin D levels are an important area for us to focus on in this country. Vitamin D is important to keep bones, teeth and muscles healthy. We know that in this country the right levels of vitamin D are not being routinely met; I wonder if I might fall into that category. Some studies suggest that one in five Brits have vitamin D levels lower than in concentrations necessary for general health, but due to our climate—we all know this; we have enjoyed our one week of summer and it seems like it might be coming to an end—that rises to two in five in winter. In fact, we are one of the most vitamin D deficient countries in Europe. We should recognise that when considering general good health.

As colleagues have said, the deficiency is notably unequal and staggeringly high among certain communities. For instance, in the UK over 50% of those from an Asian background are severely vitamin D deficient, leaving them particularly vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders. Since 2016, Public Health England has recommended that everyone over five takes a 10 mcg vitamin supplement in the winter months, but that does not seem to be gripping quite yet, either in its practice or its adherence, as the rise in Victorian diseases such as rickets confirms.

We should come together across the UK to do much more to boost vitamin D levels. I would be interested to hear the Government’s latest thinking on the idea of vitamin D fortification in the UK, a solution that would provide a boost to public health.

To conclude, much more research needs to be done on assessing the value of vitamin D as a defence against covid-19. We need every tool we can get, so that is the right thing to do. However, we know that the value of vitamin D more widely is significant and there is more we can do to ensure that that is a feature of our population’s health. That is something we could all come together to do.